Johnson v. Junkmann

• Decision Date: 12 November 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85-1556,85-1556
• Citation: 395 N.W.2d 862
• Parties: Sheila D. JOHNSON and Duane G. Johnson, Appellants, v. Pamela D. JUNKMANN and James L. Junkmann, Appellees.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 862

395 N.W.2d 862

Sheila D. JOHNSON and Duane G. Johnson, Appellants, v. Pamela D. JUNKMANN and James L. Junkmann, Appellees.

No. 85-1556.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Nov. 12, 1986.

David S. Wiggins of Williams, La Marca, Marcucci, Wiggins & Anderson, P.C., West Des Moines, for appellants.

Harry Perkins III and Douglas A. Haag of Patterson, Lorentzen, Duffield, Timmons, Irish, Becker & Ordway, Des Moines, for appellees.

Considered by REYNOLDSON, C.J., and HARRIS, LARSON, SCHULTZ, and CARTER, JJ.

REYNOLDSON, Chief Justice.

Plaintiffs Sheila D. Johnson and Duane G. Johnson appeal from a trial court judgment entered in favor of defendants Pamela D. Junkmann and James L. Junkmann in an auto collision case. We reverse and remand with directions.

Many of the facts relevant to this case are undisputed. For clarity we will refer to Sheila D. Johnson (Johnson) and Pamela D. Junkmann (Junkmann) as the only parties to this action, because they were the drivers of two of the cars involved in the collision. The site of the October 12, 1982, collision was Southwest Ninth Street, in Des Moines, approximately one block south of the intersection of Southwest Ninth and Park Avenue. At that point, Southwest Ninth is four lanes wide with two southbound and two northbound lanes. Just south of the collision site, the left of the two southbound lanes was closed because of construction. Although traffic was quite heavy at the time, lighting was good and weather conditions were normal.

Junkmann's automobile was positioned in the left of the two southbound lanes just north of the construction zone. All four wheels of the car were to the right of the center line separating southbound and northbound traffic. Junkmann had activated her left turn signal and was waiting for traffic to clear so she could turn left across the two northbound lanes of Southwest Ninth into a church driveway.

While so situated, Junkmann's automobile was struck on the right rear corner by a southbound car driven by James Fine. The Junkmann vehicle was propelled southeasterly across the center line and into oncoming traffic where it immediately collided with a northbound automobile driven by Johnson. The latter suffered various injuries in the collision.

Johnson subsequently filed this tort action against Junkmann for damages. No claim was made against Fine, who previously had entered into a settlement agreement with Johnson and had been released from liability. Junkmann's answer denied liability and affirmatively alleged any fault on her part was legally excused by the doctrine of sudden emergency.

Following trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Johnson. In a special verdict, the jury found both Junkmann and Fine at fault and determined the fault of each was a proximate cause of Johnson's injuries. The jury found Johnson sustained $75,000 in damages and that her husband sustained $1000 in damages. Finally, the jury, which was instructed under the Iowa Comparative Fault Act, Iowa code §§ 668.1-.10 (1985), assigned three percent of the fault to Junkmann and ninety-seven percent of the fault to Fine.

Trial court subsequently granted Junkmann's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and dismissed Johnson's petition. The court gave three reasons for its decision. First, trial court found the record contained no substantial evidence of fault on the part of Junkmann. Second, even if fault reasonably could be found, this fault, as a matter of law, was legally excused under the doctrine of sudden emergency. Third, regardless of fault or legal excuse, any fault not legally excused was not, as a matter of law, a proximate cause of Johnson's injuries.

On appeal, Johnson raises two issues. First, she challenges trial court's grant of judgment notwithstanding the verdict, asserting the record contains substantial evidence to support the jury's verdict. Second, Johnson contends the Iowa Comparative Fault Act is inapplicable to this case and thus challenges as erroneous trial court's decision to instruct the jury under this Act. We first address Johnson's challenge to trial court's grant of judgment notwithstanding the verdict.

I. Questions of fault and proximate cause are questions of fact, and only in exceptional cases may these questions be taken from the jury and decided as a matter of law by this or any other Iowa court. Iowa R.App.P. 14(f)(10); see Henkel v. R & S Bottling Co., 323 N.W.2d 185, 188 (Iowa 1982). In reviewing trial court's grant of judgment notwithstanding the verdict, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict and indulge every reasonable inference to be drawn from the evidence in favor of that verdict. See Kurth v. Van Horn, 380 N.W.2d 693, 695 (Iowa 1986); Nichols v. Westfield Industries, 380 N.W.2d 392, 398 (Iowa 1985); Loudon v. Hill, 286 N.W.2d 189, 192 (Iowa 1979); Paulsen v. Des Moines Union Railway, 262 N.W.2d 592, 594 (Iowa 1978). If in so doing we conclude the record contains substantial evidence to support the jury's findings, those findings are binding and trial court must be reversed. See Kurth, 380 N.W.2d at 695; Feldhahn v. R.K.B. Quality Corp., 356 N.W.2d 226, 230 (Iowa 1984); Valadez v. City of Des Moines, 324 N.W.2d 475, 477-78 (Iowa 1982); see also Iowa R.App.P. 14(f)(1).

In seeking to uphold trial court's action, Junkmann focuses on the issues of proximate cause and sudden emergency. She makes little attempt to defend trial court's determination of no fault as a matter of law. Our review of the record as a whole likewise convinces us the jury's finding of fault is supported by substantial evidence.

The parties agree that prior to the accident Junkmann was stopped in her own lane with her turn signal on. However, the record also contains evidence from which the jury could have found the front end of Junkmann's automobile was angled towards the center line and its front wheels were turned toward the center line. Finally, Junkmann's testimony suggests that in light of the heavy rush hour traffic, bottlenecked by the effect of the road construction immediately in front of her, she in fact was aware that a failure to keep her automobile and its wheels parallel with the center line increased significantly the likelihood her car would travel across the center line and into oncoming traffic if struck from behind.

We conclude substantial evidence exists from which the jury reasonably could have found Junkmann's failure to keep her automobile and its wheels parallel to the center line constituted fault under the circumstances existing at the time of the accident. While Junkmann had no obligation to anticipate Fine's actions, Iowa R.App.P. 14(f)(9), she had an affirmative obligation to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances. The jury reasonably could have found she failed to do so.

Based upon this same evidence, we believe the jury also could have determined Junkmann violated several statutory provisions, including failure to yield the right of way, Iowa Code § 321.320 (1983), and turning from a direct course when not reasonably safe to do so, id. § 321.314. Junkmann argues, however, that even if statutory violations could be found, those violations are excused as a matter of law under the sudden emergency doctrine. Specifically, Junkmann asserts any statutory violation occurred only because she was confronted with a sudden emergency not of her own making that made it impossible for her to comply with the applicable statutes.

To establish sudden emergency, Junkmann must demonstrate three things: (1) In fact, an emergency did exist; (2) The emergency was not created, directly or indirectly, by her own fault; (3) In responding to the emergency, she acted as a reasonably prudent person would have acted under similar circumstances. Bannon v. Pfiffner, 333 N.W.2d 464, 469 (Iowa 1983); Bangs v. Keifer, 174 N.W.2d 372, 374-77 (Iowa 1970). Because we are reviewing Junkmann's claim in light of trial court's grant of judgment notwithstanding the verdict, we may uphold her assertion of sudden emergency only if we can conclude each factor of sudden emergency has been established as a matter of law. See Freese v. Lemmon, 267 N.W.2d 680, 686 (Iowa 1978).

For purposes of this appeal, we may assume Junkmann established the first and third factors of sudden emergency as a matter of law. We thus focus our inquiry on the second factor: Whether the emergency was created, directly or indirectly, by Junkmann's own fault.

We conclude Junkmann has failed to shoulder the heavy burden of establishing as a matter of law she in no way caused or contributed to the creation of an emergency. It is plain an emergency was created when Fine's car rear-ended Junkmann's automobile. However, a jury could have found Junkmann's own actions in positioning her car at an angle with its front wheels turned contributed to and helped compound the emergency. Because the evidence is insufficient to prove the second factor of sudden emergency existed as a matter of law, trial court erred in relying on sudden emergency as a basis for granting Junkmann's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict.

Junkmann finally argues no evidence exists from which the jury reasonably could have found her actions were a proximate cause of Johnson's injuries. We disagree.

The classic formulation of proximate cause under Iowa law is found in Pedersen v. Kuhr, 201 N.W.2d 711 (Iowa 1972) where we wrote:

In order to be a [proximate] cause of another's harm, it is not enough that the harm would not have occurred had the actor not been negligent.... [T]his is necessary but it is not of itself sufficient. The negligence must also be a substantial factor in bringing about the plaintiff's harm. The word "substantial" is used to denote the fact that the defendant's conduct has such an effect in producing the harm as to lead reasonable men to regard it as a cause, using that word in the popular sense, in which there always lurks the...